A wonderful novel featuring a young heroine

Alan Bradley has created one of the most endearing heroines in recent memory in his delightful first novel “The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie” (Delacorte, 304 pages, $23).

It is the early 1950s. Flavia de Luce, 11, has a passion for chemistry. She is the youngest of three girls. She doesn’t like her sisters and is trying to come up with a poison to get rid of them. They live with their father in a decaying English mansion called Buckshaw. Their mother died.

Flavia hears her father arguing with a stranger one evening. The next morning, she finds the stranger in their cucumber patch. He says one word to her before dying. Her father is arrested by the police. Flavia tries to claim that she killed the man - unlikely because of their difference in size - and she plans on finding who really killed the stranger.

The police inspector doesn’t realize he has met his match. And she’s only 11.

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Richard Russo wrote two marvelous novels: “Bridge of Sighs” and the 2002 Pulitzer prize-winning “Empire Falls.”

So I expected his newest novel, “That Old Cape Magic” (Alfred A. Knopf, 272 pages, $25.95) to be as tremendous. It isn’t.

Jack and Joy Griffin have been married 30 years. He is a college professor and a former screenwriter. They have a daughter, Laura. They’ve always had trouble with both of their parents. The novel is divided into two parts, a year apart. Both surround weddings.

It is a short introspective novel. There is one really funny scene at the second wedding, but I really expected a lot more.